Loverly linger

My Fair Lady (Queensland Musical Theatre)

Twelfth Night Theatre

June 14 – 23

Based on George Bernard Shaw’s 1913 play “Pygmalion”, Alan Jay Lerner (book and lyrics) and Frederick Loewe’s (music) “My Fair Lady” is the classic story of Cockney Covent Garden flower seller Eliza Doolittle and refined pheneticist Henry Higgens in early 1900s London. After Higgins bumps into Eliza in the street, he wagers with his colleague Colonel Pickering that he can coach Eliza to speak like a high-class member of society and pass her off as a woman above her station. As Queensland Musical Theatre’s 40^th anniversary production reminds us, the musical is immensely popular thanks to its playful, catchy, and beautifully composed score and memorable ensemble numbers such as ‘With a Little Bit of Luck’ and ‘Get Me to the Church on Time’ (featuring Bec Swain’s considered choreography). For all of the infectious joy of such numbers, however, this show is all about the trio at its core thanks to perfect casting of such talented players as Kirra Lang, James Lennox and David McLaughlin.

Lennox is a spritely Higgens, still arrogant and with permanent animated scowl and over-annunciation of pronunciation and gestures alike, while McLaughlin prances about in supportive highlight. Lang, meanwhile, easily assumes both Eliza’s initial, reactive Cockney sounds and later more polite and polished tongue, all-the-while maintaining her core self-determination. And her singing is simply sublime in its grace and beauty, never faltering in emotion. Her vocals are absolutely lovely from the start, soaring to great heights in ‘I Could Have Danced All Night’ expression of Eliza’s exhilaration and excitement after a small-hours impromptu dance with her tutor.

Lennox’s initial number, ‘Why Can’t the English Learn to Speak’, is an appropriate introduction to the professor’s arrogance in outline of how one’s accent determines a person’s prospects in society, however, it does not allow his obviously excellent voice the opportunity to fully shine. Even though some songs are superfluous to the narrative, all are delivered with conviction, including when Lachlan Dodd glides about in gleeful swoon as a smitten Freddy Eyrnsford-Hill sharing his infatuation with Eliza and determination to let the time go by ‘On the Street Where You Live’.

It is unfortunate, to see their opening night performances impacted by some creative aspects. Deian Ping’s costume design offers up some sumptuous ensembles, particularly in creation of the black and white texture of an Ascot race day where Eliza is taken as a trial run, with great success until she lapses into her former self while cheering on a horse, as well as other examples in costume symmetry with the settings and sensibilities on show in scenes, however, there are some minor lapses of modern props.

Initial sound issues around volume result in overamplification of Eliza’s ‘detestable boohooing’ and Henry’s reaction to the ‘disgusting noises’ of a ‘squawking squashed cabbage leaf’, as they first interact outside a Covent Garden Theatre one cold night. And opening night microphone issues occur throughout Act One. Indeed, it is a credit to the conductor Julie Whiting and her orchestra to have quietened their playing to allow solo numbers to still be experienced as intended, and for Lang’s lively ‘Just You Wait’ to properly land in all its animated angst about Higgins’s demanding teaching methods and harsh treatment.

The orchestra is flawless throughout, finding the percussive flavours of ‘The Rain in Spain’ as equally as the beauty in Act One’s closing ‘Embassy Waltz’, where Eliza is successfully passed off as a duchess. As is often the case with Queensland Musical Theatre productions, dancing features throughout, including not only to extend out Act One’s closing ball scenes, but in the visual vignettes that occupy the stage during the overture, even if the appearance of clowning street performers seems unnecessary.

“My Fair Lady” is a musical that becomes complicated in consideration through a modern lens and audience reactions to the condescending misogyny of Higgins’ ‘A Hymn to Him (Why Can’t A Woman Be More Like a Man?)’ shows that some of its aspects do not land so well. Still, audience members are fully invested, especially as Henry’s mother (Fiona Buchana) often speaks the most sense in attempt to have him consider Eliza as a human being with feelings as opposed to an object or possession, exerting some agency within the constrains of Victorian society’s gender roles. Still, this production also provides much comedy beyond just its expected Higgins’ insults and threats to have Eliza walloped if she does not comply with expectations of her exhausting speech training. The scenes of Higgins, Pickering and Eliza together after she shows up at Higgins’s home seeking lessons are early highlights, especially when her lovable, larger-than-life but brazen dustman father Alfred P. Doolittle (Jordan Ross) arrives, ostensibly to protect his daughter’s virtue, but really to extract some money.

As always for this musical, its duration is a 3-hour long endurance, yet, in Queensland Musical Theatre’s hands, it mostly flies by quickly to leave its audience with the lingering type of joy that comes from the loverly (as Eliza would note) mix of an appealing score and some sensational performances.